Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Topic: Tax and Budget Policy

The office of Senator Tom Coburn released its fifth annual “Wastebook.” The report highlights “100 silly, unnecessary, and low priority projects” funded by federal tax dollars or government debt. The 100 projects in this year’s report cost taxpayers $25 billion and represent the enormous scale of the federal government.

Among the waste in the report:

The National Institutes of Health’s grant-making is roundly criticized. NIH provided $533,000 to study the “effects of meditation…from reading Buddhist texts,” $1.5 million to develop a smartphone game to help parents of children with picky-eating habits, $387,000 to provide Swedish massages to rabbits, and $371,000 to study whether moms love dogs or their own children more.

The National Science Foundation awarded an $856,000 grant to train three mountain lions to use treadmills to study mountain lions’ use of energy while hunting. This follows NSF’s earlier grant to study shrimps’ ability to walk on treadmills.

A small bridge in Morrison, Colorado may be removed and rebuilt for violating the federal government’s “Buy American” provision. The original bridge, built with $52,000 in federal highway dollars, contains $3,300 in American steel that was rolled into sheets in Canada. Reconstruction costs are estimated at $20,000.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided a $1.4 million grant to build a luxury hotel in Cary, North Carolina. The hotel features afternoon tea, facials, and an “upscale cocktail bar.” There are 50 hotels within 15 minutes of driving distance.

The report also includes several other boondoggles that I’ve highlighted recently:

Customs and Border Protection built 21 homes in Ajo, Arizona for its agents. CBP overpaid for land, added unnecessary amenities, and wasted $4.6 million on these extravagant homes.

The Department of Homeland Security’s vehicle fleet is underutilized. Fifty-nine percent of the agency’s vehicles are driven less than 12,000 miles a year, wasting up to $48.6 million.

These projects represent a fraction of the federal government’s almost $4 trillion in annual spending, but illustrate a larger trend. Agencies spend wildly and Congress refuses to provide the necessary oversight.

Entrenched interests encourage policymakers to allow wasteful spending to continue. For instance, the Department of Agriculture tried to close a $2 million sheep research station in Idaho, but “politicians in the region stepped in to keep it open.” There are many similar examples.

Policymakers applaud themselves for the recent drop in the budget deficit, but Senator Coburn’s “Wastebook” shows that a lot of work is left to complete.

Compensation for federal civilian employees is more generous than private-sector workers. Federal workers receive better benefits than their non-governmental counterparts in particular, and generous paid leave benefits are one of the federal advantages. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests that federal agencies are abusing this benefit.

TheWashington Post summarizes the GAO findings regarding the number of workers who are being paid for staying home:

53,000 civilian employees were kept home for one to three months during the three fiscal years that ended in September 2013. About 4,000 were idled for three months to a year and several hundred for one to three years. This is the first time the government has calculated the scope and cost of administrative leave.

The Office of Personnel Management permits paid leave for many reasons including jury duty and snow days. But those types of absence do not require one to three months of time out of the office. Instead, it appears that agencies are shifting employees to paid leave for months at a time while dealing with performance issues:

Auditors found that supervisors used wide discretion in putting employees on leave, including for alleged violations of government rules and laws, whistleblowing, doubts about trust­worthiness, and disputes with colleagues or bosses. Some employees remain on paid leave while they challenge demotions and other punishments.

This practice varies from the private sector where paid leave is used infrequently. The Washington Post notes that in the private sector “an employee accused of wrongdoing either stays at the office and is reassigned or is suspended without pay,” generally within days to minimize costs.

All told, GAO estimates that federal employees collected $775 million in salary while on leave. Employees continue to receive other benefits as well. Time on leave counts towards pension and pay increase calculations, and employees continue to accrue vacation and sick days.

GAO acknowledges that this cost estimate understates the problem because it only includes three-fifths of the federal civilian workforce. Leave is not tracked for the remaining employees.

Abusive practices are not a new phenomenon. As early as 1958, the comptroller general found excessive use of leave and ruled that it should not be used for more than 24 hours for employees under investigation.

Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Jon Tester of Montana are working on legislation to overhaul this practice. If passed, the legislation “would narrowly define the circumstances in which employees can be kept home” and “pay would be limited to a few days,” to match private-sector practices. Limiting this abusive practice would save millions in unnecessary expense.

A tax reform is spurring a savings revolution in Canada. Amity Shlaes and I wrote about Canada’s Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) in the Wall Street Journal in August. We think that such accounts would be a fantastic policy reform for America. They would simplify the taxation of savings, encourage families to save more, and spur stronger economic growth.

Toronto firm, Investor Economics, has released new data confirming the popularity of TFSAs. In just the past year, TFSA account assets increased 34 percent, and the number of accounts increased 16 percent. In June 2014, 13 million Canadians held $132 billion in TFSA assets. Given that the U.S. population is about 10 times that of Canada, it would be like 130 million Americans pouring $1.3 trillion into a new personal savings vehicle.

The chart shows the rapid growth of TFSAs since they were introduced in 2009:

The American vehicle most similar to the TFSA is the Roth Individual Retirement Account (IRA). But Roths are far inferior, and thus just 16 percent of U.S. households own them. Indeed, just 38 percent of U.S. households hold any type of IRA, even though these accounts have been around a lot longer than TFSAs.

TFSAs are like supercharged Roth IRAs. Here are some of the key features:

Individuals can deposit up to $5,500 after-tax each year. Annual contribution limits accumulate if you do not use them. So if you contribute $2,000 this year, you will be able to put away $9,000 next year ($3,500+$5,500).

All account earnings and withdrawals are tax-free.

Withdrawals can be made at any time for any reason with no penalties or taxes. That greatly simplifies the accounts and increases liquidity, both of which encourage added savings.

There are no income limits and no withdrawal requirements. All Canadian adults can contribute and withdraw at any time during their lives.

TFSAs can be opened at any bank branch or online. They can hold bank deposits, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other types of assets.

TFSAs are great for all types of saving, including saving to buy a home, a car, or to start a business, and saving for health expenses, unemployment, or retirement.

Why are we letting Canadians have all the fun? Everyone agrees that Americans don’t save enough, so why don’t we kick-start a home-grown savings revolution with a U.S. version of TFSAs? Former Treasury official Ernest Christian has long championed similar accounts, which he and I call Universal Savings Accounts (USAs). Canada has now run the real-world experiment on such accounts, and it has succeeded brilliantly.

TFSAs, or USAs, are a better way to handle savings in the tax code. Currently, many people are scared off by the complexity of U.S. savings vehicles and by the lack of liquidity in retirement accounts. TFSAs solve these problems. Members of Congress and presidential aspirants for 2016 who are interested in a popular, pro-growth, and pro-family reform to champion—this is what you are looking for.

The U.S. government’s budget deficit narrowed in its 2014 fiscal year to its lowest level in six years, as an improving economy boosted tax revenues.

The annual deficit for fiscal year 2014 fell 29% to $483.35 billion, the Treasury Department said Wednesday… the lowest deficit since 2008. …

The 2014 deficit fell to 2.8% of the country’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output. This measure, preferred by economists because it offers greater context, was at its lowest level since the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2007.

“This is not only a reduction of the deficit, it’s also a return to fiscal normalcy,” said White House budget director Shaun Donovan.

The Obama administration’s definition of “fiscal normalcy” is a deficit just under half a trillion dollars, larger than in any year before 2009.

The national debt, which was about $5.7 trillion when George W. Bush entered office and $11 trillion when he turned the White House over to Barack Obama, is now at just a shade under $18 trillion. And the director of the Office of Management and Budget declares that a “return to fiscal normalcy.” Where is Warren Harding now that we need him?

But hold on, there’s more: Donovan also noted that the federal government has abandoned its “harmful excessive budget austerity.” So we can expect more spending, and more deficits, and more debt, in the years to come.

One of my first professional jobs 25 years ago was with the economic forecasting firm DRI/McGraw-Hill. It was fun work, but I noticed that the firm’s gross domestic product forecasts with models hundreds of equations long were no better than simple forecasts based on the interest rate yield curve.

I’m sure that macroeconomic models have grown more sophisticated today, but they still can’t predict very well. Former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Edward Lazear, has a terrific piece today describing the inaccuracy of government forecasting models:

My analysis of 1999–2013 reveals that the [Congressional Budget Office]’s real GDP growth forecasts for the next year were off, on average, by 1.7 percentage points, either too high or low. Administration forecasts were similarly off by a slightly larger 1.8 percentage points on average, also too high or too low. Given that the average growth rate during this period was only 2.1%, errors of this magnitude are substantial.

Perhaps most damning: History is a better predictor of annual growth than government forecasts. Simply assuming that GDP growth will be 3.1% in each year—the average annual rate for the 30 years that precede the study period—results in an average forecast error of 1.5 percentage points.

Lazear’s article should be posted above the desk of every reporter and pundit writing about the macroeconomy. And it should be kept in mind by politicians, who often claim that such-and-such policy will create such-and-such number of jobs based on such models.

The lesson for federal budget policy should be one of prudence. We don’t know where the economy is headed, so policymakers should cut spending, zero out deficits, and start paying down debt now while we’re enjoying a run of sustained growth.

Daniel Henninger nailed it in his article “Killer Bureaucracies,” which discussed the poor performance of so many federal agencies recently. He called for “scaled-down, distributed public responsibilities” to reduce bureaucratic failure.

To that end, Congress should pursue three reforms:

Eliminate bureaucracies that we do not need. Departments that mainly pump out subsidies and intrude on properly state, local, and private activities should be terminated, including the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Energy. Federal organizations that perform useful business functions should be privatized, including USPS, FAA, TSA, Amtrak, TVA, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

When feasible, scrap department superstructures—such as Homeland Security—because they add complexity and blur responsibility. Homeland agencies, such as the Secret Service and Border Patrol, should stand on their own, have narrowly-defined tasks, and report directly to the president.

Assign the oversight for each agency to a single House and single Senate committee so that citizens know which politicians are to blame for failures. Homeland Security is currently overseen by more than 90 committees and subcommittees, but that’s absurd because when every politician is responsible, none of them are.

The federal bureaucracy can work better, but only if it is much smaller.

President Lyndon Johnson’s legacy was the so-called Great Society (read: entitlement programs). As these programs have matured, along with the U.S. population, the proportion of the people dependent on the State has soared. Indeed, spending on entitlement programs gobbles up bigger and bigger chunks of the federal budget.

As the population grows older, entitlements will grow. Worryingly, the ratio of people receiving government benefits to those paying taxes will continue to climb, too. As the accompanying chart shows, those who receive government goodies already number the same as those who pay taxes (the ratio is one). With the steady progression of the ratio, it will be very hard to put the genie of the Great Society back in the bottle. Can you just imagine how difficult it will be to cut entitlement programs when those who are dependent on the government outnumber taxpayers by two to one?